Grandchildren of Victoria and Albert - Overview

Overview

Victoria and Albert had 42 grandchildren altogether (20 male and 22 female), of whom two (the youngest sons of Prince Alfred and Princess Helena) were stillborn, and two more (Prince Alexander John of Wales and Prince Harald of Schleswig-Holstein) died shortly after birth. Their first grandchild was the future German Emperor William II, who was born to their first-born child, Victoria, the Princess Royal, on 27 January 1859; the youngest was Prince Maurice of Battenberg, born on 3 October 1891 to Princess Beatrice (1857–1944) who was herself the last child born to Victoria and Albert and the last child to die. The last of Victoria and Albert's grandchildren to die was Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, (born 25 February 1883 to the Duke and Duchess of Albany), who succumbed to old age on 3 January 1981, almost exactly eighty years after her grandmother's death.

Just as Victoria and Albert shared one grandfather (Duke Francis of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld) and one grandmother (Countess Augusta Reuss) in common, two pairs of their grandchildren married each other. In 1888, Princess Irene of Hesse, whose mother was Queen Victoria's daughter Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, married Prince Heinrich of Prussia, a son of Victoria's first-born child, Victoria, the British Princess Royal and German Empress. Another of Princess Alice's children, Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse, married Princess Victoria Melita, a daughter of Alice's brother Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1894, but divorced in 1901.

Prince Albert, the Prince Consort (26 August 1819 – 14 December 1861), lived long enough to see only one of his children (the Princess Royal) married and two of his grandchildren born (William, 1859–1941, and his sister Princess Charlotte of Prussia, 1860–1919), while Queen Victoria (24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) lived long enough to see not only all her grandchildren, but many of her 85 great-grandchildren as well. (Three of Victoria's 56 great-grandsons were stillborn, and one of her 29 great-granddaughters was born out of wedlock.)

Victoria, the Princess Royal and first child of Victoria and Albert (21 November 1840 – 5 August 1901), was not only mother to their first grandchild, Kaiser Wilhelm II, she was also grandmother both to the first of their great-grandchildren to be born, Princess Feodora of Saxe-Meiningen (19 May 1879 – 26 August 1945), daughter of Princess Charlotte (Queen Victoria's first granddaughter), and to the last of their great-granddaughters to die, Lady Katherine Brandram (4 May 1913 – 2 October 2007), daughter of Charlotte's sister Princess Sophie, Queen of Greece. After Lady Katherine's death in 2007, the last surviving great-grandchild of Queen Victoria was Count Carl Johan Bernadotte of Wisborg (31 October 1916 – 5 May 2012), born to Princess Margaret of Connaught, whose father was Queen Victoria's son Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught. With the death of Count Carl Johan Bernadotte, a generation of royalty that began in 1879 with the birth of Princess Feodora of Saxe-Meiningen and included Kings Edward VIII and George VI of Great Britain, Olav V of Norway, George II, Alexander I, and Paul I of the Hellenes, Carol II of Romania, and the ill-fated children of Nicholas II and Alexandra of Russia is finally gone.

Queen Victoria's own death in January 1901 was preceded by the deaths of three of her own children (Princess Alice in December 1878, Prince Leopold in March 1884, and Prince Alfred in July 1900) and soon followed by the Princess Royal's death in August 1901. Aside from the four boys who died as infants, Queen Victoria had survived seven of her grandchildren:

• Prince Sigismund of Prussia (1864–1866) died of meningitis.
• Prince Friedrich of Hesse and by Rhine (1870–1873), a haemophiliac, fell from his mother's bedroom window and bled to death a few hours later.
• Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine (1874–1878) died of diphtheria.
• Prince Waldemar of Prussia (1868–1879) also died of diphtheria.
• Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence (1864–1892) died of influenza.
• Prince Alfred of Edinburgh (1874–1899) shot himself with a revolver and died soon afterward.
• Prince Christian Victor of Schleswig-Holstein (1867–1900) died of malaria while on active service in South Africa during the Boer War.